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Retro Sweets & Childhood Memories

8 Mar 2013 07:39:44

At Zap Sweets we've always felt that candy isn't just a food, retro sweets are an experience, it inspires smiles and reflects a culture creating fond memories for years to come. These memories can be shared by all and often make for hours of discussion. For me that memory was visiting my grandparents. About once a month my parents both had to work and I would need to spend the day with my nan and grandad. I vividly recall that they didn’t have any toys except an old wooden rocking horse that wasn’t much fun at all, but there was a highlight to that trip where each afternoon we’d walk down to the corner store to get pence apiece of Jamesons milk chocolate caramels, which were also known as Merry Maids at the time. Lots of people often request Merry Maids from us without realising that they underwent a brand change a few years ago.

While the price of caramels has certainly changed over the years, what has stayed with me was the memory. Memories are very important to me and one of my favourite memories is of that monthly trip to the old fashioned sweet shop to get that small, indulgent pieces of caramel. I can remember the smile on my grandparents face when they saw my eyes lightup and I remember happily jumping along the path back home as the caramel smacked against my tongue.

For you maybe it isn’t a trip to the corner store with your grandparents that resonates, perhaps it’s that time you were lucky enough to wear a candy watch or necklace to school and it totally impressed your primary school crush. Maybe it was sharing a bag of liquorice allsorts with your dad while watching a football match or maybe it was just that over-sized pack of WHAM bars that got you through a tough week.

To this day I can’t have a Jamesons milk chocolate caramel without looking back to the time when I was a young lad running around the town with my grandparents, I can’t help but remember the smiles and the care free notions I had and how simple and beautiful the world seemed at the time. Something as simple as retro sweets transports me back to a simpler and happier time, it helps me to be a kid again and helps to take the daily strain of the world off your back.

Whenever I think of this, when I think of the passion that candy inspires, the memories it creates and the memories that it brings forward I not only find myself wanting to take a trip to the candy store for myself, but I want to help create these

memories for my kids. For I’ve finally learned something that my grandparents knew all too well – we won’t be around in this world forever and it can be hard to get a kids attention and make those meaningful memories, but there isn’t anything that sticks like caramel!

So while many of our blog posts here may encourage you to buy sweets, today rather than tell you to buy sweets, I’m telling you to make memories that will last a life time – and do this any way you can. But, if you are anything like me you’ve already thought of that candy that took you back to once upon a time and know the power that sweets have and so if you are ready to make sweet memories we at Zap Sweets are ready to help!